7 Simple Ways To Make Your Groceries Last All Week

More Smart Ways to Stretch Your Groceries

3. Have An Early Dinner

One of the biggest things that drives the well-planned grocery shop into the ground is after-school snacking. After a day of learning it’s no surprise that children are ravenously hungry when they get home, but binge-eating just a few hours prior to dinner isn’t good for anyone. If you can, try and organise to have dinner on the table earlier rather than later, giving kids the food that they need straight away. In the meantime, encourage them to snack on fruits or cut-up vegetables instead of packaged or baked goods, which will just line the stomach enough to quell their hunger.

4. Lock It Up

This is not really the best option, but some parents find it’s easiest to just remove temptation when it comes to snacking, particularly for store-bought snack foods. Things like muesli bars and snack packs quickly disappear when you have hungry kids, and they eat up a big portion of your grocery bill. You can choose to either put those snacks in a box and store them high in the pantry, or remove them from the kitchen all together into a secret spot of your choosing. In this way you’re in control of when they can take these snacks, and what they eat, making it easier to stretch them all week long.

5. Add Some Filling Protein

If you have hungry mouths, particularly growing teens or boys, adding protein to your baked goods, lunches and dinners is a great way to keep them fuller and stop them snacking. Adding bran to muffins and cakes, or sneaking in spinach to stovetop meals like pasta or lasagna usually works wonders. The same goes for adding beans and legumes, like lentils and chickpeas, to your meals. You can also keep a supply of boiled eggs in the fridge.

Eggs will last up to four days after boiling them and keeping them in the fridge, but you can write the date on the egg shell to be sure.

6. Fruit Fill Up

Groceries are expensive, but if you shop smart there’s one thing that you can usually get pretty cheap: fruit. Cheap fruits like apples and oranges are often a hit with kids, and yet they rarely choose fruit as a first snack option. To encourage them to pick fruits over other more expensive snacks keep a fruit bowl in plain sight. This makes it easier to stretch your other groceries across the entire week, and it’s also a much healthier option for your kids than packaged snacks.

For larger fruits, like pineapple and watermelon that need to be cut, consider cutting portions of them and keeping them in clear sight in the fridge for snacking.

7. Buy in Bulk

Not everyone has the option of buying bulk, but those that do know that it is the saviour of the weekly shop. Buying items that kids love in bulk means you can save on individual unit price, and plan better for their snacking needs. Buying things like kilo bags of protein-rich nuts, or 10kg bags of rice mean that there’s more available, but at a much cheaper price for your family. Bulk buying is almost always for non-perishable items, and you can also practice this at Coles, Woolworths or Aldi by taking advantage of deals on items you use all the time, like pasta sauce or tinned beans.

At the end of the day feeding a family is a complicated task, without the added complication or teenagers and children with big appetites. Still if you plan well and are able to curb unnecessary snacking and food waste, there’s no reason your shopping won’t last all week long.

What are your frugal ways to stretch your groceries for the week? Feel free to share your thoughts.

Clare Whitfield Chief Editor

Clare Whitfield is the Editor of Stay at Home Mum and a recognised voice in practical home management for Australian families. Based in the northern suburbs of Sydney, she balances editorial leadership with life as a stay at home mum to two school age children. Her background in home economics and more than a decade of experience in recipe development, family budgeting, and household systems inform her work.

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